Date: 23-Jan-2009 From: parisa Ramezanpour <papary1979yahoo.com>Subject: A Study of Repair Moves by Persian Learners of English in Text Chat and Voice Chat Interactive in EnglishE-mail this message to a friend

This study explored the patterns of repair moves in synchronous non-native speaker (NNS) text chat rooms in comparison to voice chat rooms on the Internet. The study examined qualities that naturally and uniquely occurred in the anonymous, synchronous chat room environment, the focus on written and spoken language devoid of the gestures, expressions, and additional tools inherent to other environments, for example. In this study, there are two kinds of main repair moves: negotiation of meaning and negative feedback. 1) Negotiation of meaning is divided into four categories: a) Clarification requests, b) Confirmation checks, c) Self-Repetition and d) Comprehension checks. Negative feedback is divided into five categories: a) Recasts, b) Explicit correction, c) Questions, d) Incorporations and e) Self-corrections. The following questions were posed: a) Which types of repair moves occur in text and voice chats by Persian learners of English? b) What are the differences between the repair moves in text chats and voice chats when time is held constant? c) Are repair moves in voice chat higher than in text chat? d) Does pronunciation repair affect repair moves in voice chat? In addition, the data were then analyzed from five different angles, in five steps: Step 1: significant differences in repair moves produced in text versus voice chat. Step 2a: significant differences of NOM repair moves produced in text versus voice chat. Step 2b: significant differences of NF repair moves produced in text versus voice chat. Step 3: significant differences of NOM repair moves versus NF repair moves produced in combined chats. Step 4: significant differences of clarification requests versus other types of NOM repair moves produced in combined chats.

The participants in this study were 60 adult speakers of Farsi who were undergraduate majors of English at Isfahan University. The data were collected in the café nets of Isfahan University. Repair moves made by anonymous NNSs in 10, 5-minute, synchronous chat room sessions (5 text-chat sessions, 5 voice-chat sessions) were counted and analyzed using chi-square with alpha set at .05. Significant differences were found between the higher number of total repair moves made in voice chats and the smaller number in text chats. Qualitative data analysis showed that repair work in voice chats was often pronunciation-related. The study includes discussion that may affect teachers' and learners' considerations of the value of NNS chat room interaction for second language development.